Teachers encouraged to compensate for parenting 'downward spiral'

A teacher giving a maths lesson to pupils at the Charter School, Dulwich, south London. Photograph: Frank Baron

Parenting skills are on a "downward spiral" forcing schools to bring up the next generation of adults, a teachers' leader warned today.

Schools see fewer adults who want to "share the pleasure of bringing up children" and more who are self-centred, compared with ten years ago, Philip Parkin, general secretary of the teachers' union Voice, said.

The "shortening length of many relationships" and the increased number of step families make it harder for adults to be full-time parents, the retired primary teacher from Grimsby told teachers.

Instead schools are forced to take on parents' roles, Parkin said.

Parkin said: "Schools are being required to take on more and more of the responsibilities that rightly belong to parents; and to provide more of the stability in children's lives which should be provided by families. There is also the perception that, in general, the skills of parents are declining as one generation succeeds another."

Schools already have to check pupils for weapons, gang membership and extremist views, as well as measure their weight and speech development.

The schools secretary, Ed Balls, wants schools to chart children's well-being, teenage pregnancies, drug problems and criminal records from next year as well.

Parkin said he was worried that the more schools did for parents, the less responsibility they would take for their children.

"The transfer of responsibility becomes complete and the expectations upon parents reduce," he said.

"Is government going to measure the performance of parents and publish local league tables to show how they are doing? Are they going to be held accountable for the kind of people their children grow into? Of course not - but schools are. If schools are going to work in partnership with parents then there must be a balance to that partnership."

Parkin's comments come under a month after sir Alan Steer, a headteacher and the head of a major government review of school behaviour policies, told the Guardian that parents must take more responsibility for tackling violence among their teenage children. "We live in a greedy culture, we are rude to each other in the street. Children follow that," he said.

Barbara Wilding, the chief constable of South Wales, has said gangs are now many children's substitute for families and parents.

She said: "Tribal loyalty has replaced family loyalty and gang culture based on drugs and violence is a way of life." A spokeswoman from the department for children, schools and families, said: "We want teachers to focus on what they do best - teaching. Of course children can't do well at school unless they have the support they need at home. That's why we set out in the Children's Plan how parents will get more support and schools will have more services located around them - so that teachers are free to get on with teaching. "Guidance to schools on their duty to promote the well-being of their pupils is based on what is already happening in schools across the country. It's a new duty but not a new burden."